


Walking Forward with Eyes Wide Open

by jazzetry



Series: The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place [1]
Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Abstract, Alternate Universe, Ambiguous Relationships, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Best Friends Do Kyungsoo | D.O & Kim Jongin | Kai, Byun Baekhyun-centric, Darkness, Experimental Style, Friendship/Love, Glasses, Hints of the Supernatural, Invisibility, M/M, Rain, Silent Protagonist, almost nameless protagonist, as in it's literally night for most of this, as in there's a reason so many are described with glasses, baekhyun's been kicked out, chanyeol's really suspicious, it's more implied though, very linear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:01:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24123289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jazzetry/pseuds/jazzetry
Summary: Strange people emerge at night and greet the now destitute Baekhyun.
Relationships: Byun Baekhyun/Park Chanyeol
Series: The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1781482
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6





	Walking Forward with Eyes Wide Open

Deafened by the resounding emotions and thunderous hollowness through forked tongues, the gentle annoyance of cicadas growing and ebbing in volume bleeds through the echoes, reverberating around his brain until he can no longer hear. He’s guided by orange streetlights, illuminating its vicinity in a warm glow. There’s a gentle drizzle, the iota droplets bouncing in puddles formed by divots in the uneven concrete, and rippling gently onto his shoes. He can’t see anything when he looks down.

He narrowly dodges a young, spectacled woman and her large, dark dog. The animal barks loudly in his direction, and the woman pulls the leash, only admonishing the creature quietly. Without a startle, he shoves his hands in his pockets, grasping at where the woman’s thick jacket grazed his hand. The sensation burns at his untouched skin, trapped beneath his nerves and infecting his hand with an unfamiliar touch. He coughs into the open air, perturbed by nothing at all. 

He’s walked this path many times in his youth, but through the dark fog that’s settled in his brain, it’s completely foreign. But he’s guided by familiarity in the sensation, following the wisps of his memory. 

A small group of young men blindly walk forward, hoods obscuring most of their faces as he walks past. Except one boy stops, his smooth yet loud voice commanding the others to stay. 

“Hey, kid. Wait up,” the once closest to him says, a dark beanie sitting comfortably on his head, crossing his arms. When he doesn’t even react, only stopping on a particularly large gap between the sidewalk, standing on uneven ground, the young man puts a hand on his shoulder, “What are you doing here?”

He feels the embers of a sharp, burning stare on his face, beckoning him to raise his head. He doesn’t comply.

“Kid, answer the question.”

“Uh, hey,” one of the other boys interjects meekly, “we gotta get home, Suho.”

“Don’t go any further,” Suho warns as the rest of the boys continue without a word.

Paying no mind to the empty threat, he continues down the path. Droplets hitting the top of his head, dropping down until it hits the puddle below him. Already drenched in vague, emotionless startle from long before, the sudden confrontation means absolutely nothing.

A large gust of wind blows right through him, whisking away whatever somewhat dry leaves on the ground off behind him, landing in a trail at his wake. The echoes of his home hits him just as the wind does, belligerent meaningless superficiality sucker punching him in his gut, leaving him defenselessly open for attack.

But nothing comes. Not even the large dog bounding off kilometers behind him. Or the group of young men all dressed in the same black suspiciousness. Not his kin cursing his slow pace. 

He can finally resume after a pregnant cease in movement. Darkening with imperceivable motion, the sky hangs over bright stars and yellow streetlights, shrouding them each in a dark mist, ceasing his view of the street for a split second before his steadfast vision slowly changes with the thick fog.

The dreary skies pouring upon him in small droplets of burning, icy daggers, seems vast, ceaseless despite the gaps between the heavy, thick clouds. They embed into him, sharply breaking through his marred skin until they bleed down his body and onto the rough concrete.

For a split second, the darkness is cut by bright lights. And in an instant, he’s blinded, unable to see the car to which the lights belong to or the source of the voice that calls out, “You need a ride?” 

He stops, and turns to look at the man, blinking away the figures dancing in his vision. He faces the man with reckless abandon and stares the man down, dark brown fighting through a blackened car. In a split second, the lights come to life, the young man’s face in clear view. 

Skittish eyes dance between him and the road behind, watching for anything that may knock them both into the distant woods. In the absence of noise, the other whistles a short tune to a song that’s played on the radio before, and finally speaks, as if the question had been forgotten, “So?”

There’s something dangerously neurotic about this man’s incessance, like the orifice from which he can’t see over the back of the seats, especially in contrast to the bright front, holds a dark secret, and only entrance can wake it from its slumber. 

“Alright, I get it, I look insanely suspicious, but trust me. I can help you.”

The answer, if he were even looking for someone to sweep him away from here, is somehow even more deterring. Like the man’s teetering between being a complete psychopath or an idiot. He doesn’t want to know which, especially if he’s going to be stepping foot into a motor vehicle on the slick asphalt. 

“Don’t worry, I am completely sober,” the dude murmurs to himself, as if filing through the day’s events, and coming up empty, absentmindedly adding a quick, “probably.”

Suddenly, a blaring jingle cuts through the somewhat peaceful cries of cicadas circling around the occasional chirp of crickets. The man picks up a phone, “Yeah? Yeah, I’m almost there… hang on,” the young man actually turns his head from the phone, not moving the device, but covering the receiver as if it’ll do more than muffle his voice slightly, “Sorry, you’re time’s up. I gotta get home.”

With that, the car shoots forward with a start, taking whatever light the car had with the strange interaction. It feels strangely likely to hear the sudden pop of metal on metal, coasting straight into another car, or a light pole, or any object in the vicinity. 

There’s no distraction but the ceaseless stretch of night, illuminated by the peaking of the moon over the dim clouds, its wondrous beauty effervescently present, and so gleamingly transcendent, he can no longer see through his dark vision and he’s enthralled. 

Without even the remembrance of his former home, he’s still, stupefied in his place, soaking in the increasing growl of thunder off in the distance as it rumbles deep against his very soul. Mesmerizingly alight, a bolt of lightning hits just down the street from him, the resulting thunder clapping against his body until he gets whiplash. 

And he carries on, the fetid odor of burning metal and scorched concrete merely an inconvenience as he walks over the dark spot on the sidewalk just in front of him. Out from a deviating road, he can see an older woman run out, barely looking up through thick, tortoiseshell rims, holding a jacketed, small dog as she speeds past, passing through him as she does so. 

Is he shivering from the cold, or is it the remnants of heat and electricity still soaking the ground beneath him and running up his body? 

He carries on, not because there’s a desire to do so, no, instead, there’s a necessity. The ceaseless road spanning miles long is quite literally never-ending, going out beyond the horizon and even the borders of the city. Maybe even the state. 

Previously unheard, the first roadside house he’s seen since his own bounces to life, unmatched vigor in the ear-destroying bass suddenly projecting from the house and into the ground, surrounding the darkened patch on the ground, competing against the ambient thunder from the cloudy skyline. 

There’s a sudden deluge in people emerging from the gated home like roman soldiers through a vomitorium, pouring out without stop. Glazed over eyes look past him, and off into the distance, welcoming the long line of cars around the corner. 

“I can’t believe you let him take those,” sobriety is rare when so many have stumbled into cars, ends of dresses and loose clothing hanging haphazardly out car doors, seeping in the heavy rainwater as they speed off. But strangely, there’s a pair that are trailing behind the rest, arguing in their own personal bubble, without a care for anyone else around them.

But a private conversation can’t stay private, especially when the volume rises so harshly against the suddenly somber dance music playing to either very few guests, or none at all.

“You know how hard it is to get his hands off of ‘em when he gets ‘em,” the taller boy complains, not sparing a glance to him when he’s standing there, stuck in petrified stillness. 

He has to backtrack into the looming bushes, already moments from toppling into the plants as a result of the exodus that had just occurred mere moments earlier.

“Seriously?” the shorter asks, “I said I was going to be gone for at most five minutes. And I came back in two, just to find that you’ve given him the one thing I told you he can’t have.”

“I’m sorry,” the taller boy latches onto the shorter, sniveling as if it’ll just dissolve the sour mood of the other.

Although not showing it through voice, the other sighs, and says, “Well you still put him, and us in incredible danger,” in this strangely melancholic yet somehow playful tone that the other doesn’t seem to catch up on.

He tries to walk forward, blend into the impressive lot of people that remain, most of whom don’t even seem to notice he’s there, but something adept catches him off guard.

“I think someone’s listening to us,” the short boy says, the wording in direct contrast to the boy’s actions. The shorter of the two boys is staring straight at him, sharp eyes catching his vision from feet away, even through the crowd of people. 

“Really?” 

The resulting ambient fear that’s now settled in with the dust around the concrete ground and sopping grass is so viscous that he’s walking through mud just to answer the unasked questions of the other two. These two young men are spitting representations of the most stripped-back version of his parents, bar the hanging from the rope of undercut pyre and the kicking away of any goodness that was left. 

“I’d say whoever they are should come over,” the shorter says, prodding the taller to threaten in a similar manner.

“Wait, you’re not going to do anything bad, are you?” the taller man asks, all too concerned to him, the eavesdropper.

There’s a look of annoyance that meets one of confusion, settling the darkness, and allowing him to appear from the ashes. He sidesteps past an inebriated couple barreling down the sidewalk and into the road.

“Somebody oughta teach people like you a lesson,” whatever ire the shorter male spits out between forked tongues fall on an immovable wall. He knows it all too well, allowing the venom to hit him and simmer on his skin until he doesn’t feel it anymore.

The staredown continues onward, even as the dreary stars flicker above them. 

“Hey, uh, D.O., we gotta get going,” the taller male says so hesitantly, looking over at the couple in the slick street before turning back to the shorter. The nickname sounds forced, erroneously strained to reveal the true commonality of the sobriquet. 

D.O., paying no mind to the taller male, continues to threaten him silently, “How much do you know?”

Tires screech against the slick pavement, echoing with a clap of thunder to reverberate through his ears and around them. He looks over his shoulder at the source of the noise only to find no sign of wreckage. And he looks back, only to be greeted by the same sight behind him. 

The remaining crowd of young party-goers are still slowly dispersing, but there’s a strange discontinuity between him and the others. He carries on walking, visuals of flames atop smoldering oil and flattening beneath light rain creeping behind his actual vision.

A crossroads appears slowly from over a short and shallow incline, faded lines separating the intersecting two-lane roads. There are a few non-residential buildings that spring up against the road, beginning the entrance to civilization where, instead of towering trees, there are stout business buildings and stores lined with empty parking lots.

And the noise has all but faded, welcoming him in, not with the looming solitude of the road from his house, but with a strange ominous absence of all people present only in somewhat populated areas late at night. The only true welcome is in the form of twenty-four hour convenience stores that buzz with exhaustion settled with unkempt storefronts and electronics that somehow looks more dilapidated than the empty building and lot that’s been collecting dust for years.

He steps into the store, the bell ringing above his head, before the absent-minded young man behind the counter mumbles out a half-hearted, “Welcome,” before he slips into the aisle closest to the door, swiftly moving to the back of the store.

The shelves are lined with rows of snack foods, the refrigerators and freezers in the back humming in uneven frequencies and the mechanical spin of various heated snacks both echoing around the enclosed space. And they coalesce into a pulsating anxiety that thrums into the air and spreads to fill the white noises. 

Carefully counting quickly pocketed money in the form of loose bills, he grabs as much as he can carry, at least before he finds a few necessities and quickly walks up to the counter.

The young man’s name tag reads _Xiumin_ in carefully written sharpie with a small smiley face alongside it, though through the overhead lights, he can make out the original _Minseok_ etched into the small piece of metal. 

As he leaves, Xiumin mutters a, “Have a nice night,” though the clock behind the counter reads _2:50_ , just as the door slides shut. 

He quickly pockets the bag, walking up to the next intersection, leaning against the post shortly when a lone car drives past, and waiting for the light to turn red. There are no incoming cars, but the light is still green. And while he would run across hastily, the cacophony of popping as metal is bent with ease, the onlookers reacting in petrified horror, the spill of bile on rough asphalt, they’ve been ingrained into his mind, even when he didn’t see the incident or the wreckage that ensued. 

There’s a few tick sounds as buzzing wires eventually turn the red hand into a walking figure. He checks both directions before he walks across the street.

The brazen shatter of glass grazes his mind and out onto his body, while his head is almost leaden as the street grows wider, and the red hand begins to flicker on him. 

The pitter patter of heavy rain turns to a small drizzle just as the beginnings of dawn ebb over the horizon. The roads are still sparse of people, nighttime still lingers long into the morning and into the minds of the laymen and elite through the elated brightness of caffeine-induced highs and the eventual crash. 

Of course, that doesn’t stop there from being people, especially when daytime slowly arrives, where carelessness allows large or small dogs to run up to him in leashed excitement while the owners don’t even notice him, but only the strange behavior of their dogs. Through thick frames of exhaustion and clouded lenses, he sees them, but they don’t see him.

Except this young man, cheerfully walking a small dog down the street, startlingly aware beneath the thick fog of remaining drizzle. The dog is no different, running up to him and nudging him.

“Sorry, she doesn’t usually do this,” the young dog owner huffs out, struggling to grasp control over the leash, “I swear she’s well behaved.”

The dog, admittedly is. While its white coat is darkened by what’s left of the rain, and its paws are coated in dark mud stains, it hasn’t done more than vie for his attention. 

“Sorry, are you allergic or scared of dogs?” the young man asks suddenly, when he’s stock-still, the dog’s still trying to gain some semblance of attention from him, and the young man is conflicted about what to do.

The dog has begun running off, though further into the sudden expanse of a roadside pond and park. And the jerk by which the small animal moves forces a sudden release of the leash, and the animal is gone.

“Shit,” the man mutters under his breath, running after the animal with the grace of a workless rich man who’s never had to move a finger on his own.

He stands there, watching in mortified curiosity as the small white animal runs toward the pond without slowing. Especially when the young man’s figure is mere feet behind it, closing the gap as quickly as it formed.

And, in a sudden movement, they both disappear into the water, and for a split second, the water goes still, and there seems to be no chance for either the dog or the man to break through the surface. 

“It’s okay, I got her!” the man yells, appearing next to him within a second, “Man, that was a close one, wasn’t it?”

The young man is both still there, and is also unfortunately past the sheepish apologetic stage of strangerdom. And it shows.

“Are you heading this way?” the young man points in the direction he was planning on going, “‘Cause I gotta change, as you can tell.”

So they walk down the sidewalk, past the unorthodox field that, just as abruptly as it appears, makes way for another residential area. The young man is chattering on, the words meaningless, but nonetheless filling the space. By his side, the young man’s clothes are dripping water into small puddles on the sidewalk, holding the dog in a tight grip. 

“Alright, this is where we must part, I’m afraid. I bid you adieu,” in a dramatic fashion, the man bows as far as possible before the dog flails and the man is standing upright again. 

As he walks across the street following the stranger’s departure, still hearing the other talking to the dog, he begins to feel a set of eyes on him. None are visible around him, not even in the bushes, or between cracks in fences, or walking past, or from behind curtained windows.

The sun is midway over the horizon, lighting up the dark path into a barely there sense of familiarity where he can almost traverse it with recognition. 

“Sorry,” a middle-aged spectacled man says when the dog almost rams straight into him.

The sense of sight is completely unfamiliar, being able to see everything from his height now and remembering it from when his eyes were barely off the ground. 

He fishes out his phone from his grungy black hoodie and looks up to the sky, the resumption of the rain inevitable, and disappointingly murky again. There’s no fog resting on his chest until he can no longer breathe, but the intense downpour blocks his vision with a fog of impossibly fast rain before he can even check his convenience store purchases for an umbrella or rain poncho of some sort, but they’re gone with the remembrance of cacophonous noise.

Rather than the darkness hanging over his tired shoulders, coating his black hoodie in a deeper hue, the rain falls past his eyes and onto his dirty black gym shoes, washing away light stains of dried mud. 

His legs have long gone numb through the slurry of heavy rain and powerful winds, but he carries onward, stepping off the sidewalk and into the grass for people taking an early morning walk to run back home, woefully unprepared for the weather.

A few give him a short nod while others move in a blinding sprint off into the fog. And for a split second, he almost deigns to follow suit, though the bouncing items fresh off a convenience store shelf weighs him down, leaving him to walk at the same pace he’s been walking all night.

He’s long entered the town, beginning to breach the border to another city, and suddenly feeling the magnitude of how far he’s traveled from his house. Walking past a large sign he’s only ever seen through the window of a car, he rests against it and looks up at the dreary sky.

The sky stares back at him.

“Baekhyun? What are you doing out here?” he’d forgotten his friend lived somewhere in the area. However, he never remembered his friend ever being out so early, especially with the intense rain that soaks them to the bone. Chanyeol, the friend, is holding up an umbrella, barely shielding either of their bodies, but the warmth another body has in the numbing cold he’s been subjected to for so long is enough to ease the torrential downpour that’s so foreign to the city they live in.

“Yeah, it’s raining like hell, isn’t it?” the taller male ponders absently, letting the umbrella droop slightly to just barely allow the rain to pelt his face, “Damn rain woke me up too.”

Chanyeol huffs out in annoyance, shoulders tense as white knuckles grip the handle of the umbrella. A few seconds go by before the tall male seems to remember his presence, and releases the tension with shaky hands.

“Sorry, I’m just really annoyed today, and I don’t know why.”

There’s still something peculiar in the way the taller man seems to be actively avoiding his eyes, jerky movements changing the pattern of the folds on a thick sweatshirt in barely one second intervals, “So, what are you doing out here? You never answered.”

He’s looking through this warped mirror, seeing figures that are so obviously them, but the small dents on its surface disfigures their bodies and faces until they look unlike themselves. But the rainwater fogs up the mirror until they’re no longer visible, and nothing strange matters anymore.

“Whatever, let’s just head over to my home. It’s fucking cold out,” Chanyeol sighs, looking anywhere but at him

The thick band of tension that’s wrapped around Chanyeol’s shoulder is miniscule when he considers the people he’s met earlier. Strange first impressions flutter through his brain as his legs and lungs burn with settled discomfort and exhaustion.

Swiftly turning between trees, they walk further into the neighborhood, breaching the heart of it as quickly as they entered.

They eventually stop in front of a small house, and Chanyeol falls into glassy-eyed deliberation. The taller man frowns, squeezing the handle of the umbrella with unprecedented force, and says, “Uh, hey… uh, you might not want to make too much noise.”

He’s led inside, and allowed to go to bed right next to Chanyeol, watching the glaring five o’clock fall onto exhausted eyes. As adrenaline leaks out of his freshly changed body, he finally feels the full effects of his several mile long trek. 

“Try to get some sleep,” Chanyeol whispers, sitting next to him in the bed.

Somehow, despite exhaustion taking full effect, he can’t seem to fall asleep, still somewhat confused by all the people he’s met earlier. He looks into Chanyeol’s eyes and scrapes open his chapped lips, “I kept getting stopped by these random people. One guy’s name was… Suho? Another was D.O., and I didn’t catch the others’ names. Do you know anyone with those names—nicknames, I guess.”

Chanyeol’s countenance darkens, even though he can’t see the other’s face. The fabric of the thick blanket ruffles into divots caused by Chanyeol’s tight grasp before said man responds offhandedly, “Yeah, we can talk about this in the morning. Just go to sleep.”

Low baritone rumbles quake the soft comforter until he’s lulled into a stupefied slumber, his body still shivering from the effects of the cold outdoors and the dark rain soaking into his skin. 

The rain is still pelting the windows as he drifts away, exhaustion clouding his vision to Chanyeol’s blurred actions.

Baekhyun feels the eyes of hundreds just when his vision leaves. Just as he falls asleep, something else awakens.

He’s not alone with Chanyeol.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> alright, so this was more of a fun thing to try and practice writing strange ideas in almost strange ways (not really) than an actual real thing. it's also kinda inspired by those weird gothic short stories that english teachers (in the u.s. at lease, i don't know about other places) liked to force children to overanalyze (e.g.: the cask of amontillado, a tell tale heart, the scarlet ibis, etc. (a lot of edgar allan poe, as i've come to realize)).
> 
> so the actual intention was, because i have no trust in my ability to convey what i want to), that baekhyun ends up out on the streets and is borderline invisible to everyone except those without impaired vision (whether by alcohol or glasses or just a hood pulled over the eyes). and these people who interact with him (barring chanyeol, of course) are these strange characters that all represent major flaws present in baekhyun, and happen to be all the members of exo with stage names (except i forgot xiumin somehow, so i tossed him in as a random cashier). and after he meets everyone, he suddenly becomes visible to everyone. and then he meets chanyeol and the story ends without any actual closure.
> 
> lol, it probably didn't come across like that, but i tried. i hope you're doing well in the current climate of the world, and thank you. stay safe and stay sane.


End file.
